Empire of cotton

A global history

Sven Beckert, Allen Lane, 640 pages, hardback, £30.00

Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism.

Sven Beckert’s book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labour with new machines and wage workers to change the world.

Well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia and combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to reshape the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia.

This is how industrial capitalism gave birth to an empire, and how this force transformed the world.

The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners.

Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk